Orbital debris simulation in Rust

Overview

Looking at results of in-flight collisions (for example, the Iridium/Kosmos event) or various ASAT tests, we seem to end up with an initial dense 'cloud', which later stretches into lines along the orbit. I was curious if I could replicate this in a simple simulation, so I decided to try and code it in Rust. I am completely new to Rust; the code will be bad, but the results are surprisingly interesting, so I still wanted to share this.

Implementation

The code is trivial; I used a simplified n-body simulation where we only consider the dynamics between a single massive body (Earth) and many smaller ones (the debris), but no debris-debris gravitational interaction. That speeds things up a lot, from around $O(n^2/2)$ to just $O(n)$ (and more importantly, it's easier to code). We then initialize the bodies with different random velocities, and simulate the evolution using velocity-Verlet.

After the simulation, we can plot everything using a Python script (in results/post_processing.py).

Plans

We already get some interesting results. I would like to analyze these, to see the evolution of the shape, mean distances between objects over time. I am also considering adding in an exponential pressure based on the International Standard Atmosphere to make some estimations about decay rates, dependent on the initial orbit height and debris process generation dynamics (i.e. isotropic scattering versus something more directional).

Example results

50 pieces of orbital debris, starting with roughly the ISS' orbital parameters, but with random $\Delta v_x$ and $\Delta v_y$ (uniform, between 0 and 300 m/s, always positive because that gives nicer plots), plotted with increments of 500 seconds, starting on the right-hand side.

We see the debris starts in a densely packed cloud (500 - 1000), then shifts into highly stretched lines, particularly visible in the second orbit. We can see some of it increases in orbital height significantly, while others get close to the surface of the Earth.

First orbit

Second orbit